Saturday, 5 December 2015

Gorky 17 on X1000

Today I wanted to take a look at the recently released game called Gorky 17 by Hyperion Entertainment. I am running Gorky 17 on AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition on my AmigaOne X1000.

Hyperion Entertainment are of course also the developers of AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition.

This game has been a long time coming, with the original game released in 1999, but in 2015 it has been released for AmigaOS 4.1.

Gorky 17 is available for purchase from most Amiga vendors, like AmigaKit, Vesalia and AmigaStore.eu, amongst others! It costs around AUD$50.

When I received the package this week I also ordered with it the "Powered by AmigaOS" t-shirt, notepad and AmigaOS - 30 Years of Emotion sticker! Here they are:

Here is a close up of the inside of the Gorky 17 package:

Gorky 17 has a simple enough install procedure via the provided Install program on the CD.

With the installation completed the game drawer appears as below:

The manual for the game is included as a PDF:

The configuration program included allows me to change the screen resolution, full screen or not, and to use hardware gfx rendering or not. By default software rendering is on.

I using the 1920x1080 resolution on my X1000, and deselect the software renderer.

When the game runs a movie intro plays:

The main menu for the game is below:

I selected a new game and the game starts off in Poland, with a small team of 3 as the adventure unfolds.

Dialogue between the team members and people you meet explain the story as it goes along and the tasks you need to do to progress in the game.

The game world is isometric 3d map which your team explores:

The game has quite a array of elements to team member development, with various personal abilities able to be upgraded as their skill level improves with enemy encounters in the game. This is Cole Sullivan's Inventory view:

There is a lot of strategy to this game as it is a turn based game, a bit reminding me of Laser Squad on the Classic Amiga. It is important to plan out what you want to do in each turn with each team member to be able to progress through the game.

You can place objects like rifles and pistols into the team member's hands, but also put objects there to restore health points (HP) and provide ammunition to the team members as they run out. This is Jarek Ovitz's view - I have put the rifle in his hand during this turn so he is ready to attack an enemy.

The team members do not all have the same resources, and the abilities of each team member also differ. It is important to remember this when planning attack strategies to inflect maximum points of damage on enemies in each turn.

Here are some screenshots from the game world as we set off. When fighting enemies you can select each character to move them a certain number of steps from their current position within your turn.

It is easy to select a new weapon to place in a team members hand without needing to go to the inventory view.

It doesn't take long to find trouble:

When you click on the enemy you can see their remaining Health Points, and the range that they can move when it is their turn.

Note that action constitutes the action part of the players turn and has a limited range. Each team member also has one movement action within each turn, with the possible remaining move locations highlighted in green. As you move around the remaining possible step locations decrease until all your steps are exhausted for this turn.

You then click on End Turn icon on the bottom right to allow the enemy to take their turn, and then you can have another go. If any of your team are killed during the fights then the game is over.

In this case though I was successful!

You can see Cole now has more experience and show the kills made so far:

As the game proceeds the team comes across other previous teams who have had many team members killed and mutated. Objects like boards (below) can also be picked up for use later in the game:

The enemies keep on coming!

The team then stumbles across a guy that provides more information about what is happening, and joins the team as it continues on.

As the game progresses the enemies get censurably more difficult to beat, and many of them attacking at once makes strategy amongst your limited resources and team members very important to win the battles.

As our additional team member is unarmed we need to move him around strategically to avoid him getting killed.

Not doing so well with that though - Getting a bit close for comfort.

One of my team members has killed enough enemies to increase a level. I got 5 points to distribute across his various abilities to improve them:

I find myself having to rejuvenate my player's health more and more often and quickly running out of things to do that with! Jared's down to just 18/150:

Here I apply a bandage to improve his health a little, and then move him away from the enemies:

As you can see, things are moving along nicely and I have managed to kill quite a few enemies successfully!

However in the battle below I made a tactical mistake and left one of my team too close to multiple enemies, leaving him vulnerable to multiple attacks on the enemy turn.

So unfortunately I lost one of my team and it was Game over!

I noticed you then have the option to repeat the battle which avoids having to start again - this is nice.

The music is nice without getting annoying, the spot effects are good and the level of strategy in the game does pull you into the adventure.

The turn based nature of the gameplay may appeal to some more than others, but I think it is fun to play games like this as there is more strategy involved than just the normal hack and slash style gameplay.

Gorky 17 is an interesting game and worth giving a go! More new games for Amiga in 2015 - fantastic! :-)